1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to driver circuits and, more particularly, to a cascode driver circuit with gate oxide protection.
2. Description of the Related Art
Drivers are electronic circuits that are typically used to control other circuits or components. A cascode driver is a specific type of driver that includes transistors at the output of the driver arranged in a cascode configuration. Various cascode driver designs include a structure where the main supply voltage of the circuit is higher than the gate oxide voltage tolerance of the cascode driver transistors. To protect the gate oxide of the cascode transistors, the driver circuitry is typically designed such that the cascode bias voltage provided to the transistors is maintained at half the supply voltage. This type of driver design may result in a non-linear driver, which does not make use of the current carrying capability of the driver, and usually takes up a significant amount of space.